5G NTN LEO Based Demonstrator Using OpenAirInterface5G

3GPP Release-17 formally recognizes Non-
Terrestrial Network (NTN) components as an integral part of
future telecom networks. The integration of 5G with NTN has
gained significant traction due to the joint effort from academia,
industry, and government space agencies. The first phase of
5G-NTN prototype development has been successful using GEO
satellites. Moving ahead, LEO satellites can provide higher
data rates and lower latency compared to GEO. In this paper,
we discuss the ongoing activities, and planned experiments
related to the project 5G-LEO (OpenAirInterface5G Extension
for 5G Satellite Links). 5G-LEO aims to provide direct access
of 5G services to a ground UE via a transparent payload
LEO satellite. To the best of our knowledge, 5G-LEO is the
first work involving the adaptation of 5G protocol addressing
the challenges presented by the LEO satellite channel for
example high and time-varying Doppler and frequent handover.
Open-source 5G-NR protocol stack OpenAirInterface5G has
been taken as the baseline and 3GPP Release 17 compliant
adaptations have been done in all the layers for this purpose.
An end-to-end hardware demonstrator has been developed for
in-lab validation. The results of the experiments using the LEO
satellite channel emulator will be summarised in the full paper.